Marcialonga revolutionizes the start
February 1, 2007
In this year's Marcialonga which started from Campestrin, 13 km from Moena, the organizers applied a revolutionary start arrangement. It was essentially a continuous flow of skiers, but subdivided in "waves" or groups, each with a prescribed time fixed for the beginning of the flow. Each skier knew his/her starting time with an accuracy of a few minutes (the duration of the flow of skiers of the corresponding wave). The chips embedded in the bibs allowed the recording of individual start times when the skier passed the starting gate admitting eight skiers in parallel. The size of the groups was 500 skiers.
A clever innovation consisted in placing the groups in fenced boxes side by side and not one behind the other. With the 10 groups (+ the elite box) this arrangement took a width of some 90 m and 42 in the skiing direction. The elite skiers had fixed places within their box and this group had a simultaneous start. All other boxes filled up from behind in an arbitrary order. At the prescribed time the front of the box was opened and the skiers moved on into a transition area which tapered down to the width of the starting gate at the front end. Clothing bags could be left outside the boxes before entering, or inside along the sides. Starts extended over a total duration of 1 hour 20 minutes.
This arrangement was a total success:
- skiers behaved with calm and discipline
- there was not the slightest trace of a battlefield, as in mass starts
- it was possible to ski at one's own pace right from the start
- no bottlenecks occurred after the start or along the track.
This was the ideal start that Worldloppet skiers have dreamt about! No wonder that it was lauded by everybody. The IAWLS Committee has written to Marcialonga and insisted on adopting this start arrangement in the future, also when the race starts in Moena.
After this experience skiers are better informed and will take full benefit of the new start. Many skiers did not realize that whether they were first or last in their box, it had no influence on the result. Instead of keeping warm in the heated tent (another Marcialonga innovation!), they entered their box 90 minutes or more before the start time, as they are accustomed to do in races with a mass start where bottlenecks occur.
Congratulations to Marcialonga for their pioneering work!
This page was last revised on September 16, 2007